I write this as a sort of explanation for why Im doing what I do. A sort of raison dêtre for my philosophical work. Especially the last part of this short text will shed some light on the requirements for us to move into a different form of ontology, and hopefully wipe philosophy clean from stains like existentialism and metaphysical ontology. Platos theory of forms states that there are general ideals which describe the highest form of a thing. For instance there is an ideal table, which defines tableness. A table is more a table if the table resembles the ideal table more. The forms are perceivable to the mind only of course, and only in veiled and imprecise versions. Plato is somehow right of course. But there are some problems. My favourite example is this: Lets say I draw a perfect circle, and show it to you asking you what it is. You answer that it is a circle of course, because it is the most circle like circle we could imagine. Now lets say I draw little radiating lines from it, and a cloud next to it and ask you what it is. Its hardly a perfect sun, but still you recognise it as a sun, even though in there is still hidden a perfect circle. The true nature of the ideal forms is this: They are templates or conceptual constraints with which we can match sensory impression against. We have a set of constraints, rules and conditions which can be met by sensory impressions. I look at a picture of a sun, and I say to you that it is a sun, but in fact it is a picture. It is also simply atoms reflecting light. It is many things at the same thing, but in the given context it is MOSTLY a sun. Many of our ideal forms or meta-templates as I call them are triggered by the picture, but one of them is triggered the most (elsewhere I have described this idea of something being something the most, so I wont dig further here, ask me for the full text). With this in mind then we should take care to remember that there are no suns, houses and circles in the physical world. There are simply atoms mixed together in a certain configuration. The position of atoms are a function of time, and so positions change based on what time you are looking at. The configuration currently is a sun in a picture, but before long it has been trashed and is burning in an incinerator becoming energy. Time changes the configuration endlessly, into all possible permutations from the given now-configuration. And all configurations might be traced back to a common ancestor configuration in direct lineage. Now with this in mind we can think about the mind itself. We look at it and we are suddenly in a rut. We ask ourselves What is consciousness?! we ask What is cognition really?. The main problem is that where consciousness and cognition is born is inside a system of the brain, it isnt born in any meaningful way in the physical realm. Cognition is thoughts, thoughts do not have locality as a function of time (they have other things as a function of time and the configuration of locality in the physical realm). Cognition itself though is a form, it is a meta-template. The problem is that it is not to be recognised anywhere, it is something that we can deduce, but we cannot see it anywhere. So nothing we see fits our meta-template, nothing is MOSTLY consciousness. We look at a brain, and it is mostly a neural network of bio-electro-chemical reactions. It is not MOST consciousness, it is something else. So we are looking for a form which does not exist, because nothing is MOST a cognitive function. There are two underlying problems here: 1. That we believe we are looking at a chair when we are in fact looking at a configuration of wood before us. 2. That the we do not have a physical description of consciousness. The first problem is that we look at consciousness and are baffled, then look at a chair and are satisfied. The false satisfaction of going Wow, I really understand chairness is an illusion. Chairs are just as baffling as consciousness, its just that we are very used to chairs, but to fulfillingly describe one in a world where there were no chairs and no bums which could sit on them would be largely impossible. Or imagine a world where people sat on everything, but had no distinct chair. You say Well imagine a thing only for sitting, and people would try hard, but would say Well its a small table, its not a chair - because they are used to a different set of forms. The second problem is the biggie: We lack a physical description of consciousness. Before we can actually understand what it is, we must recognise it in its physical sense (I have a long text on what I call space-based systems for recognition without conceptual understanding, so again I wont go into this here - but ask me for the details if youre interested.) To understand consciousness we must first define it by its physical properties. Like we have defined a brain from its physical properties, so we must do the same for consciousness. Because knowing, the whole base of ontology revolves around matching meta-patterns with sensory input. So if we have no sensory input to match against our meta-pattern, we will forever be lost, and have no true knowing of the concept of consciousness. The goal then is to first understand the meta patterns and their limitations. Secondly it is to grasp the physical properties of consciousness, and identify them as aspects of physical reality. Through the analysis of relationships between things which have locality as a function of time.
Posted on: Sun, 23 Nov 2014 10:56:19 +0000
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